AUTHOR; Sharon Cracknell
A travel diary detailing escapades in foreign lands which most of us wouldn’t dream of setting foot in! My interest was immediately ignited. Sharon Cracknell has written an entertaining anecdotal account of her travels to places the typical traveller might avoid.
With multiple predicaments to
overcome and unconventional difficulties to surmount, she travels to far-flung
challenged climes such as Ethiopia, Tanzania and Cuba. She takes in Venezuela, a land of food
shortages and unemployment, where hospitals are starved of medicine and where was difficult to travel around in due to the economic crisis since
2014.
She adds Columbia to her travel
list, a dangerous, violent country where shootings and bombings, kidnappings
and drug wars are the norm. The local currency, the Bolivar, an almost
worthless currency, funds jaunts such as cycling in Caracas taking in a five
hour tour of the infamous slums of 23 de Enero and paragliding over Chicamocha
Canyon. She cites Caracas as being well-known
for the ruthless drug lord, Pablo Escobar, a brutal man responsible for killing
thousands of people including politicians, journalists and ordinary citizens, notorious
now elsewhere in the world due to the popularity of US Crime Series, Narcos.
After visiting the ‘Stans’,
Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan, she ventures into North Korea via
Beijing where she eats clams doused in petrol from a barbeque (and survives!)
and goes shopping in Kwangbok Department Store (a personal bucket list ambition)
before managing to hide some of the local currency (the North Korean Won) so
that she can take it illegally back home.
After attending the Mass Games in
Pyongyang, with special guest Kim Jong Un in attendance, she enjoys the
delicacy of dog meat soup before setting off for Africa where she visits the
most hostile desert on earth, the Danakil Depression, near the border of
Eritrea. She takes in Uhuru Peak, Tanzania
and Mount Toubkal, Morocco’s highest peak.
She then sets her sights on
Havana, Cuba, where she ventures to Guantanamo Bay, the US naval base-come-prison
used many years to house Muslim militants and suspected terrorists. But it
wasn’t all foot-slogging around Cuba’s infamous landmarks. She enjoys a visit to the Buena Vista Social
Club in Santiago de Cuba in the old French quarter of Tivoli, which houses
Fidel Castro’s tomb. Whilst practicing
her Spanglish, she was transported back to a time of vibrancy of Havana’s
nightclubs during the 1940s, whilst drinking Cuba Libres and Mojitos.
Afterwards she enjoys listening to musicians
on the streets of old Havana whilst reminiscing about the many bribes, gifts,
back-handers and bungs (call them what you will) she has had to instigate to
get around the many unusual countries she has visited.
This travel diary is an
insightful account of a Yorkshire lass, who visited these remote countries with
limited knowledge of their native tongue, only just being able to order food
and ask directions acceptably. She
recalls her travels with hilarity and wit and keeps the pages alive with
entertaining stories which are incongruous whilst remaining informative.
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